Shelley Fralic: Amanda’s video should be compulsory viewing

Shelley Fralic, Vancouver Sun columnist10.22.2012

Cyberbullied teen Amanda Todd, whose suicide made headlines around the world, led an active online life. These photos appear to have been posted in 2009. Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Death+bullied+teen+Amanda+Todd+being+investigated+RCMP/7381793/story.html#ixzz298aOA913

Amanda Todd’s heartbreaking YouTube video has received more than 20 million views since the 15-year-old’s tragic suicide on Oct. 10 but B.C.’s Ministry of Education has issued a memo urging teachers not to show it in class. The head of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation says that advice ignores the reality of bullying in the Internet age.

The Internet and social media may have changed the way bullies torment their victims, but not much has changed in the last 50 years when it comes to the way we deal with perpetrators. Amanda Todd’s death should be a catalyst for change and a call to hold bullies to account.

After the publication of my column last week suggesting that the kind of teen bullying that resulted in Amanda Todd’s suicide will never change until we make the bullies accountable, I heard from a surprising number of adults with their own stories about being bullied.

Many talked in heartbreaking terms about their school experience decades ago, and how they have never recovered emotionally from being bullied. Others detailed how they were bullied as adults by co-workers and bosses — over issues like their appearance, their ethnicity, their accent, their personal life — and, unable to cope, sued their antagonists or quit their jobs.

Those emails, and the wide-ranging discussion that has followed Amanda’s death, simply highlight what we already know: Bullying has been going on forever, and we seem incapable of dealing with it.

It’s clear that we, as a society, aren’t equipped or motivated enough to identify bullies publicly, to impose consequences, whether that means a criminal charge, loss of privilege or disciplinary action of any sort.

Parents of bullied kids face roadblocks and inertia with every plea for help. Bullied kids often see no way out, as was the case with Amanda, except for suicide. Witnesses to bullying lack the skills to cope, seemingly unable to step in and thwart, much less report, the bullying going on around them.

Public school educators are clearly overwhelmed and, in many cases, utterly inept, turning a blind eye or invoking the kids-will-be-kids mantra.

We are letting the bullies, often supported by a cabal of like-minded friends and ignorant parents, get away with socially sanctioned murder.

Oh, we call in the experts and wring our collective hands over the breakdown of civility, over the Wild West that is the uncensored Internet, over the bombardment of cultural messages, cyber and otherwise, that prompt too many young people to question their worth.

We discuss the fine line between bullying and sarcasm, and bullying and schoolyard teasing. We debate the merits of arming our children with the tools and confidence to cope with psychological and physical unpleasantries that are part of life versus the wounding, often deadly, campaign of the true bully.

Which brings us to the Amanda Todd video, which is eight minutes, 16 seconds long, filmed in black and white with an urgent piano solo as musical backdrop, and shows a mostly obscured Amanda, her long hair curling over her bare, slim 15-year-old shoulders, holding up a series of bold printed messages, flash-card style, that unravel her reality.

The homemade video opens with the printed message, “Hello, I’ve decided to tell you about my never-ending story” and ends with two photos, one of an arm bleeding with razor cuts, and one of an arm with a tattoo that says “stay strong.”

Amanda posted the video in early September of this year. On Oct. 10, slightly more than a month later, she committed suicide in her Port Coquitlam home, a tragedy that has galvanized an international discussion about bullying.

The video alone has reportedly been seen by 20 million YouTube viewers around the world.

And yet, this week there is a debate raging among British Columbia educators and adolescent behaviour experts over the video’s suitability for viewing in school classrooms, proponents touting it as an invaluable educational tool while opponents worry that its message could trigger vulnerable teens to view suicide as an answer.

But the horse is surely out of the barn.

Among the emails I received this past week were several from parents with teens who said they have watched Amanda’s video with their children, using it as the catalyst to speak frankly to their kids about bullying, about what it is and about what to do, whether they become a victim, or whether they are a witness.

That video is Amanda Todd’s legacy and, supplemented with an appropriate curriculum, should be compulsory viewing in every school in the country.

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